Naming Bullets Read online

horse retained its saddle, and he could check it later, once they were away from the carrion-dogs.

  He approached the horse with some caution, but the animal not only let him get near, but allowed him to take the reins and mount the saddle.

  “Ahwhalas, Elf. Run.” Ullu’s greatdeer paced in a small circle, its head raised and sniffing the air.

  Giryati dug his heels into the horse’s sides, spurring it onward. Ullu’s greatdeer leaped ahead, taking the lead, and they galloped away.

  It wasn’t long before Giryati picked up on the trail left by the two bandits, hoofprints in the slope of a hillside. “Bad Elfs?” asked Ullu.

  “Yes,” he said. “I need to retrieve my maps. Then I can show you how they work and start teaching you how to make your own.”

  “Show Ullu maps now?”

  “I don’t have any supplies. I need paper, ink, surveying equipment . . .” Giryati trailed off as he saw the look of frustrated confusion on Ullu’s horsey face.

  Ullu struggled to find the right word. “Boshekstufekha,” she said at last.

  Giryati didn’t bother to ask for a translation. She’d conveyed complicated as plainly as if she’d said it herself. “It is until you understand the basics.”

  “What basics?”

  Giryati shrugged. They were still half a day behind the bandits and it would be tomorrow at the earliest for them to close the distance. He started at the beginning, both teacher and student, because for every concept he introduced to Ullu he tried to learn the Horkish equivalent. He learned the Horks measured distance, when they bothered to at all, in deerpaces, which was about twice the length of the Elven yard.

  “That hill over there . . .” Giryati pointed to a small dome-shaped rise about a quarter of a mile away. “How far would you say it is from here?”

  Ullu snorted. “Hill there. We here.”

  Giryati tried a different tactic. “If you were going to tell someone how to go to that hill, how would you do it?”

  “Ullu say, ‘go hill.’”

  “Which hill?”

  “Stupid Elf. Hill.” She pointed.

  “I see several hills. How do I know which one to go to?”

  Ullu scrunched up her face in concentration, trying to wrap her mind around this new concept. “Elf see three hills?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one hill, no two hill. Go three hill.”

  Giryati smiled. “That’s called giving directions, Ullu.”

  “Faw.”

  “Now, suppose you wanted to leave directions here for someone else to see, even though you were gone, how would you do it?”

  A crafty look came over her face. “Map.”

  “How?”

  “Tell Elf make map.”

  They continued conversing until it grew too dark to follow the trail left by the bandits. Before striking up a fire of his own, Giryati scanned the horizon for any signs of distant campfires but found none. Ullu slipped away to hunt and returned shortly with a pair of talarin and some spicy tubers which they roasted in the coals.

  After they ate, Ullu took out her bag of sling bullets, a tiny jar of thick white pigment, and a hollow needle.

  “See,” she said.

  Giryati observed, fascinated, as she sucked pigment into the needle, and then held it tightly in her teeth. Instead of using the needle as a stylus, she moved the stone carefully, tracing a complex glyph. She finished, and then stuck the needle back into the jar to drain while examining her work critically. She grunted with displeasure and tossed the stone into the darkness.

  “Wait,” cried Giryati. “Why did you do that?”

  “Bad kohaddaween. Ullu bad hands.”

  “May I try one?”

  Ullu shrugged and passed him the needle, jar, and a stone.

  “What is the image for a talarin?”

  She took a stick and scratched it in the dirt. He looked closely, deciding it didn’t seem too difficult.

  “No eat rusa.” She pointed to the jar of pigment. “Rusa.”

  “All right. Why not?”

  Ullu grinned, showing her teeth. “Bad.”

  Giryati labored over the stones for the rest of the evening. He found the actual method difficult to master. He kept unconsciously trying to use the needle as a quill, holding the bullet still, and received chastisements from Ullu. He ruined five stones before she was satisfied with his last effort. The pigment dried instantly on the bullets’ surfaces, and couldn’t be wiped or blotted to fix a mistake. She looked at his failures and sighed.

  “Elf no hunt talarin,” she announced sadly. “Bad kohaddaween.”

  “They’re still useful as bullets, aren’t they?” Giryati asked, looking at the handful of stones.

  “Faw,” said Ullu. “Ullu bad hunter. Good magic. Bad hunter.” She winked at him.

  Giryati awoke the following morning before the sun had lifted above the eastern horizon. The sky showed a pattern of high clouds promising cooler temperatures. His sleep had been troubled, full of dreams of Horkish symbols and general uneasiness.

  Ullu was already awake and handed him a spiky fruit and her water skin. “See,” she said. “Ullu make map.”

  She showed him a palm-sized flat stone upon which she had drawn a crude map with her pigment. He looked carefully, interpreting the symbols on it before daring to speak. “This . . .” he began. “This is where we are? Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is where we were yesterday? The trees? And those are the three hills?”

  “Yes.”

  He traced a long, sweeping curve, trying to understand what it might represent. As the first rays of the sun struck the stone, he suddenly had a flash of insight. “This is the path of the sun. This shows what direction we travel?”

  “Faw.” Ullu sounded impressed. “Good map?”

  “It’s a very good map, Ullu, because I understood it. A map that can be understood is one that lives up to its purpose.”

  “Good. Elf hunt bad Elfs. Ullu make rusa.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Bad.”

  It was nearly midday before Giryati spotted Ullu approaching from behind. Her greatdeer cantered along, gaining quickly without seeming to put forth much effort. Giryati had seen wild greatdeer before, and knew they were the fastest animals in Verigo over a distance, and few predators had the stamina to pursue them for long. Giryati’s nose wrinkled as she pulled the greatdeer up next to him. She seemed to have been doused in some foul-smelling substance which left a white pasty residue on her hands and arms.

  “What in the name of the King . . .” Giryati made a valiant effort not to breathe.

  “Ullu make rusa,” she smiled apologetically. “Bad.”

  Giryati moved his horse around until he was upwind of the stench. It lessened enough that he felt he could at least breathe without reflexively vomiting. “Besides creating a stink to drive off all the wildlife for miles, did you finish making your rusa?” Giryati’s stomach flip-flopped and he decided he wasn’t quite ready to try eating anything yet.

  Ullu showed him her jar, brimming once more with the thick white ink. “Ullu make rusa,” she said, her tone carrying all the wisdom of her advanced age. She looked around, at the direction they had come and the way they headed. “Bad Elfs?”

  “We’ve gained some ground on them. I believe they’ve slowed their pace somewhat. Just a few miles back I spotted droppings that might have only been six hours old. If we don’t see them by nightfall, I’d bet we will tomorrow.”

  “Faw.”

  They rode on throughout the afternoon. As the sun finally dipped behind the horizon once more, they stopped and set up camp. Giryati took special pains to hide their fire behind an improvised screen of leafy weeds which he tied together and staked to the ground.

  “Why?” Ullu asked, nodding at the screen as she expertly slit a large snake she’d killed from head to tail, gutting it. Giryati grimaced at the thought of eating such a creature, but knew if he spent
any time at all among Ullu’s people he’d have to learn to live like they did, and that meant eating what they ate.

  Giryati had spotted a suspicious dark smudge in the distance he thought might be smoke. As the darkness rose, he was pleased to see he’d been right; an orange star sparkled in the distance, too low to be anything but a fire. “If I’ve done my work well enough, they may not notice our fire, and we can catch them by surprise.” He sniffed at the strangely appetizing odor wafting from the snake, spitted lengthwise on a hard stalk. “That smells pretty good, Ullu.”

  She smacked her lips. “Hsishe good. Need good kohaddaween.”

  “About naming bullets,” said Giryati presently after they’d eaten. “Will you show me how to name them for the Elves we’re tracking?”

  Ullu’s face grew troubled. “Magic no hunt Elfs.”

  “Even bad ones? Even those who would steal from me and leave me to die? Even those who would kill one of their own?”

  Ullu shrugged much in the same way an Elf or Dwarf would have.

  “I know their names, their kohaddaween. Lysonid and Baliele. Will you show me how to make the symbols?”

  Ullu turned away from the fire, refusing to look at Giryati. “Bad magic hunt Elfs.”

  “I thought we had a deal. I show you how to make maps, you show me how to do your magic.”

  “Ullu show magic.”

  “You showed me how to name talarin.”

  She turned back to him. “Sling stone no hurt Elfs.”

  “I’m not going to use a sling bullet.” Giryati drew the pistol. He’d spent the morning cleaning it, preparing it to fulfill its destiny. It had contained but two bullets, which he’d carefully wrapped up in a strip torn from his shirt to protect them from the elements.

  “Stupid Elf stick,” said